Hundreds gathered at Tompkins Square Park tonight for the Rally Against Hate, displaying signs that supported an end to racism, the ban on Muslim refugees, the proposed building of a border wall, and women’s reproductive rights. This was just the latest in a week fraught with protests and marches against the new Trump Administration’s executive actions.

The recent proliferation of protests and grassroots movements points to increased public discourse on politics and human rights. The Rally Against Hate was one example of an energized city eager to invoke change in Washington.

“This is a school night, and look how many people are here,” Sheryl Nelson, 41 of the West Village said, pointing to her 12-year-old son. “There have been protests in D.C. in the past about pro-choice, against nuclear war, what have you, and I feel like I’ve never seen so many people out protesting.. I think that elected officials will see that people are showing up and protesting and chanting, and hopefully that will inspire them to do the right thing,” Nelson said.

Sheryl Nelson, 41 of West Village joins Tompkins Square Park Rally Against Hate with her 12-year-old son: “This is a school night, and look how many people are here!”Photo credit: Cassidy Morrison

Rather than dwelling on the fear that permeates throughout the country, protesters expressed their optimism that public demonstrations would inspire the public at large to get involved with a cause that they care about.

“I wish we didn’t have to do it this way, but the good side is that we have a lot of people active,” said Tamira Wyndham, 48 of the East Village. “My purpose here is to encourage people to do more than just attend protests, but also to get involved with an organization and work on specific things, whether they want to change a law or whatever they want to do.”

Wyndham stressed the need for protesters to go further than attending a demonstration.

“I think protests are really important, but I don’t think they’re enough by themselves,” Wyndham said. “A one-time protest is great, but it doesn’t do anything by itself. You have to keep the pressure. These are great, but there needs to be more.”

Amid loud chants of “Dump Trump”, protesters chatted excitedly with their neighbors. They complimented each other’s signs. They munched side by side on free vegan donuts being passed around.

“I think this woke something up in people, it got people off the couch and on the streets instead of complaining,” said Joy Lau, 32 of the East Village. “When I came here and saw that there are so many people actually protesting, putting in their time, standing in the cold, I see that we all need this support.”

Lau, among others, expressed the importance of carrying on widespread movements and protests like this one, in order to give people a new outlet for expressing themselves while remaining in solidarity with one another. This was not, in her view, sore losers commiserating but rather hopeful citizens showing strength.

“I don’t know if this is the new normal because it’s not normal at all,” Lau said.” I think it’s actually good that all of us came out in the first week. It’s like a frog being put in slowly boiling water. If this came out slowly, we might not notice it. We know that we have to take action. The feeling is that we have to do something right now.”

Lau’s urgency has been echoed across the country and will, in her view and in that of many, continue throughout the next four years as more people feel the need to let their voices be heard.

Donna Heyward, 47 of Brooklyn’s Gowanus Projects, said her stepson was killed by police. She attended the protest at 1 Police Plaza because she wants to stop police brutality she said grew under retiring NYPD Commissioner William Bratton. Photo by Cassidy Morrison

Margarita Rosario is angry. Her 18-year-old son and his cousin were shot 22 times and killed by police in 1995. She has been fighting for justice in the courts since that night, and she blames retiring NYPD Commissioner William Bratton.

Rosario of the Bronx, stood with a modest group of protestors just feet from hundreds of NYPD officers at Bratton’s retirement ceremony yesterday fighting for their voices to be heard over praise for Bratton. Rosario said Bratton’s controversial policing methods were to blame for an increase in police brutality and deaths.

Rosario’s son Anthony, was shot 14 times times, mostly in the back and side in the Morris Heights section of the Bronx in 1995. At her feet were various news stories and photos of the police brutality that has tarnished Bratton’s record. Bratton served in the NYPD from 1994-1996, and was reinstated by Mayor Bill de Blasio three years ago.

“When Mayor de Blasio put this criminal back into commission, it hurt me and other parents to see this man who has caused so many deaths”, Rosario said. “de Blasio didn’t care about the families. Again, he put Bratton in office. We just can’t get rid of this criminal.”

As Rosario spoke to the group, bagpipes sounded from across the plaza. The ceremony was set to begin soon, and more uniformed officers flooded in to honor their commissioner.

“I believe the blood that has been spilled in New York City has to do with Commissioner Bratton,” Rosario said fiercely. “They’re all corrupt, it doesn’t matter who places him. Corruption goes with police brutality.”

Detectives Patrick J. Brosnan and James Crowe were investing a robbery in a Bronx apartment in 1995 when they shot and killed Anthony Rosario and his cousin Hilton Vega, 21. A third suspect was wounded. Twenty-two shots were fired killing them both. Most of the shots hit the young men in the back. Family members said the men were face down on the ground when killed, but police say they were reaching for a gun. Police had responded to a call about the men stealing $50 from a neighbor. No charges were filed against police, but the families were awarded $1.1 million in a civil trial.

In his 46 year career as an officer, Bratton has served in Los Angeles, Boston and New York City. He resigned in July as the outrage over police brutality in the city increased.

Departments across the country imitated Bratton’s policies, including his “broken windows” policing, which held that violent crime could be deterred if police crack down on lesser crimes, such as turnstile jumping and graffiti.

Donna Heyward, 47 of Brooklyn’s Gowanus Projects, said she lost her stepson to Bratton’s policies in 1994 when he was just 13.

Heyward pressed herself against barricades separating her from NYPD officers congregated in 1 Police Plaza. She shouted expletives with tears in her eyes as officers, toting dogs and pepper spray, eagerly awaited the arrival of the famed retiring police commissioner.

“He should have never come back with his broken windows policy,” said Heyward. “I don’t see why they even let him come back in after the damage he did in the 90s.”

While the homicide rate declined significantly during Bratton’s tenure, criminologists concluded that focusing on more innocuous crimes had minimal impact on violent crimes. Homicides continued to plummet even after Bratton left the NYPD.

“It’s ridiculous how focused he is on neighborhoods where the underprivileged are living,” Heyward said. “Why do they harass these people? Why don’t they open up these communities and give youths something to do? They close every activity, they take everything away, to give themselves reason to have these kids arrested.”

While Mayor de Blasio has championed the protection of civil rights, the Inspector General for the NYPD has reported the department’s systemic singling-out of minorities, having received complaints including improper use of force.

“It’s all people of color,” Heyward went on. “We’re the ones who get it most. You open the news, you hear about the next black child who got killed because, ‘Oh, I thought he had a gun’.”

Some of the protestors held photos of loved ones, but others held news clippings featuring Eric Garner, who was placed in a lethal chokehold by NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo in 2014.

Protestors from all five boroughs waited with Heyward across the plaza laden with signs plastered with faces of young New Yorkers who had fallen victim to police brutality in the 1990s.

“Not all cops who live around me are bad guys,” said Gary Phaneuf, 54, of Staten Island. “I got a guy next door to me used to be DEA and he cuts my grass. But the really bad ones, like Pantaleo killing Eric Garner, it’s terrible. The idea that these cops get away with murder, it’s just terrible.”

In a New York Times op-ed, Bratton boldly called himself a “reformer”, having changed the way NYPD officers interact one another as well as with nonviolent criminals throughout New York City.

“There are police reformers from outside the profession,” Bratton wrote, “who think that changing police culture is a matter of passing regulations, establishing oversight bodies and more or less legislating a new order. It is not…what changes police culture is leadership from within.”

While Bratton maintained that cops could change other cops, public opinion of the police and confidence in the NYPD has remained low.

Javier Castro Suarez, 41, of Kearny, New Jersey, stands in front of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum entrance with two small American flags in his hands. Suarez visits ground zero every year. Photo by Cassidy Morrison.

Each year, thousands of people journey to New York City to pay their respects to the 3,000 victims of the 9/11 terror attacks.

Fifteen years later it is still painful.

“It was heartbreaking 15 years ago,” said Dennis D. Jenkin, Jr., 47, of Ohio. “Me and my wife were here on vacation. We heard a plane about two blocks away flying low… next thing I knew the tower got hit. I wanted to help, but my wife had to come first and I got her to safety.”

Jenkin visits the memorial every year to commemorate those lives lost.

“I try to come back every year,” he said. “It’s hard because of work. But 15 years later I’m here and it seems like it was just last year that it happened. It’s very emotional.”

Jenkin is not alone in his dedication to visiting the World Trade Center. Hundreds of thousands of people from 50 states and over 100 countries have visited the National September 11 Memorial & Museum since it opened five years ago.

Jay Couch, 52, of the Philippines said he it changed the way people feel about the world.

“I got home after work and turned on the news. It was horrible,” he said. “After, there was a bad atmosphere. It lasted for weeks. It has defined how we live in a large part. It affects how you feel about other parts of the world.”

People from other parts of the US and the world gathered in front of the museum entrance early on the morning of the 15th anniversary. Tourists and locals alike carried cameras and American flags around the fountain that sits beside the museum site.

Javier Castro Suarez, 41, of Kearny, New Jersey, stood in front of the museum entrance with two small American flags in his hands. He recounted the day on which he was meant to go to work in the first tower as supervisor of the cleaning company.

“I come here every year now for 15 years,” Suarez said. “I was doing laundry on the day, getting ready. Someone tells me, ‘turn on the TV’ and I see the second plane. Outside my window I could see the Towers. I was supposed to be working there, but my alarm did not wake me.”

Suarez writes poetry and prayers for the victims of the 9/11 attacks. It is easy, he says, to only see the disaster and the destruction inherent in this event. But that is not the healing way. He also sees possibility of rebirth.

“This tragedy woke up the country,” he said. “It forced us to see one another as people, as brothers, not just as different cities or different states.”

Every year Suarez takes a photograph of the site, waves hello to familiar former employees and composes a prayer for those who perished 15 years ago.

As tourists waited outside the museum until it opened to the general public, police officers milled about the square keeping an eye on the surroundings. The atmosphere was somber as New Yorkers and out-of-towners snapped photos of the new skyscraper recently erected nearby.

Spectators with guidebooks, English dictionaries and cameras in hand stood sentinel as early morning church bells tolled in remembrance of those lost. Regardless of nationality or native tongue, each visitor had a story of the morning on which the world changed.

“We are all neighbors,” Suarez said in his native Spanish, “and therefore we are family.”